LOS ANGELES — Lucille Ball took Robert Osborne under her wing more than 50 years ago when the
Turner Classic Movies host was a fledgling actor — changing the course of his life.

Osborne’s acting career was slowly building in the late 1950s. He was under contract to Ball and
Desi Arnaz’s Desilu Productions and was a guest star on several TV series. He even appeared on the
pilot episode of
The Beverly Hillbillies.

Then, one day, the
I Love Lucy actress took aside the native of Colfax, Wash.

Osborne, 81, recalled her saying: “‘You could be an actor, and I think you could be a success at
it. But it’s not going to make you happy.’”

But she knew what would.

“She said to me, ‘What you should do is write,’” he recalled. “‘You were a journalism major at
the University of Washington. You love to do research. You love old films. Nobody is writing about
films. We have enough actors, but we don’t have enough writers.’

“She is the one who kind of got me away from acting.”

And the rest, as they say, is film history.

In 1965, Osborne wrote his first book,
Academy Awards Illustrated, with a foreword by Bette Davis. Since 1989, he has been the
official “biographer” of the Academy Awards. The sixth edition of his exhaustive history,
85 Years of the Oscar, was recently published.

In 1977, Osborne joined the staff of
TheHollywoodReporter; five years later, he began writing the “Rambling Reporter” column — which he
continued to do until 2009.

Osborne was the on-screen host for The Movie Channel from 1986 to ’93 and has been the primary
host of TCM since the nostalgic cable network began in 1994. Ben Mankiewicz came on board as the
second host in 2003.

Osborne’s hosting gig on TCM has made him a superstar among classic-film buffs. A delightful
hybrid of Walt Disney and Walter Cronkite, Osborne is a gracious host. His introductions of four
prime-time films seven days a week are clear-eyed, informative and respectful.

“Movies are his life,” said Charlie Tabesh, senior vice president of programming at TCM. “People
really connect with him. Over time, he’s become more than a TV host. He has come to personify the
identity of TCM in a significant way.

“There are people who watch TCM every single night. They feel like he’s part of the family.”

Besides introducing 35 hours of prime-time programming a week, Osborne also serves as the host
of the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood. Next month, he and Mankiewicz will depart Miami on
Disney Magic for the third annual TCM Film Cruise, with stops in Nassau, Bahamas, and Disney’s
private island, Castaway Cay.

“If I didn’t have my little schedule book, I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning,” Osborne
said, laughing.

Ironically, he doesn’t have much time to see new films.

“That’s something that’s changed for me,” he said.

“When a movie opened — if you lived in New York — you would see it at Radio City Music Hall,
where it would play a couple of weeks, and then you moved on to the next movie. Now, you can see it
the rest of your life; it’s going to be on Netflix and DVD.

“I am a big James Bond fan, so, when that opens, I really have to see it. I did see
Gravity, but I don’t have the enthusiasm to go see a movie as often as I used to go.”